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Mansfield Park

Jane Austen died on the 18th July 1817, and so it seems a good time to showcase LMH’s first edition of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park (1814). One of the first things that strikes the modern reader looking at this is how interesting it is that it was originally published in three small volumes, rather than the entire book being in a single volume: this obviously makes it more portable, its reader would only need to take the current volume with them whilst out and about. Today Mansfield Park is widely regarded as one of the more difficult novels of Austen, with much commentary focussing on its possible autobiographic elements and its mention of the slave-trade and plantation that underpins the aristocratic life depicted in the novel.

Our copy was donated to us by Katharine Mary Briggs, who gave us the core of our rare books collection, and it is kept in the eponymous Briggs Room.